An Autobiography of Davy Crockett

by Stephen Brennan

  The general’s pet, Mr. Grundy, charged for one thou sand miles from Nashville to Washington, was sanc tioned by the Legislature, I suppose because he would huzza! for Jackson and because I think proper to refrain from huzzaing until he goes out of office when I shall give a screamer that will be heard from the Mississippi to the Atlantic or my name’s not Crockett—for this reason he came out openly to electioneer against me. I now say that the oldest man living never heard of the President of a great nation to come down to open elec tioneering for his successor. It is treating the nation as if it was the property of a single individual and he had the right to bequeath it to whom he pleased, the same as a patch of land for which he had the patent. It is plain to be seen that the poor superannuated old man is sur rounded by a set of horse leeches who will stick to him while there is a drop of blood to be got and their maws are so capacious that they will never get full enough to drop off. The Land office the Post office and the Treasury itself may all be drained and we shall still find them craving for more. They use him to promote their own private interests and for all his sharp sight, he remains as blind as a dead lion to the jackals who are tearing him to pieces. In fact, I do believe he is a perfect tool in their hands, ready to be used to answer any purpose to promote either their interest or gratify their ambition.

  I came within two hundred and thirty votes of being elected, notwithstanding I had to contend against “the greatest and the best” with the whole power of the Treasury against me. The Little Flying Dutchman will no doubt calculate upon having a true game cock in Mr. Huntsman, but if he doesn’t show them the white feather before the first session is over, I agree never to be set down for a prophet, that’s all. I am gratified that I have spoken the truth to the people of my district regardless of consequences. I would not be compelled to bow down to the idol for a seat in Congress during life. I have never known what it was to sacrifice my own judgment to gratify any party and I have no doubt of the time being close at hand when I will be rewarded for letting my tongue speak what my heart thinks. I have suffered myself to be polit ically sacrificed to save my country from ruin and dis grace and if I am never again elected, I will have the gratification to know that I have done my duty. Thus much I say in relation to the manner in which my down fall was effected and in laying it before the public, “I take the responsibility.” I may add in the words of the man in the play, “Crockett’s occupation’s gone.”

  Two weeks and more have elapsed since I wrote the foregoing account of my defeat and I confess the thorn still rankles, not so much on my own account as the nation’s, for I had set my heart on following up the traveling deposites until they should be fairly gathered to their proper nest, like young chickens, for I am aware of the vermin that are on the constant look out to pounce upon them, like a cock at a blackberry, which they would have done long since, if it had not been for a few such men as Webster, Clay, and myself. It is my parting advice that this matter be attended to without delay, for before long the little chickens will take wing and even the powerful wand of the magician of Kinderhook will be unable to point out the course they have flown.

  As my country no longer requires my services, I have made up my mind to go to Texas. My life has been one of danger, toil and privation, but these difficulties I had to encounter at a time when I considered it nothing more than right good sport to surmount them; but now I start anew upon my own hook and God only grant that it may be strong enough to support the weight that may be hung upon it. I have a new row to hoe, a long and rough one, but come what will I’ll go ahead.

  A few days ago I went to a meeting of my constituents. My appetite for politics was at one time just about as sharp set as a saw mill; but late events have given me some thing of a surfeit, more than I could well digest; still habit they say is second nature and so I went and gave them a piece of my mind touching “the Government” and the succession, by way of a codicil to what I have often said before.

  I told them to keep a sharp lookout for the deposites, for it requires an eye as insinuating as a dissecting knife to see what safety there is in placing one million of the public funds in some little country shaving shop with no more than one hundred thousand dollars capital. This bank, we will just suppose, without being too particular, is in the neighborhood of some of the public lands, where speculators, who have everything to gain and nothing to lose, swarm like crows about carrion. They buy the United States’ land upon a large scale, get discounts from the aforesaid shaving shop, which are made upon a large scale also upon the United States’ funds, and they pay the whole purchase money with these discounts, and get a clear title to the land so that when the shaving shop comes to make a Flemish account of her transactions, “the Government” will discover that he has not only lost the original deposit but a large portion of the public lands to boot. So much for taking the responsibility.

  I told them that they were hurrying along a broad M’Adamized road to make the Little Flying Dutchman the successor, but they would no sooner accomplish that end than they would be obliged to buckle to and drag the Juggernaut through many narrow and winding and out-of-the-way paths to hub deep in the mire. That they reminded me of the Hibernian, who bet a glass of grog with a hod carrier that he could not carry him in his hod up a ladder to the third story of a new building. He seated himself in the hod and the other mounted the ladder with his load upon his shoulder. He ascended to the second story pretty steadily, but as he approached the third his strength failed him, he began to totter, and Pat was so delighted at the prospect of winning his bet that he clapped his hands and shouted, “By the powers, the grog’s mine,” and he made such a stir in the hod that I wish I may be shot if he didn’t win it, but he broke his neck in the fall. And so I told my constituents that they might possibly gain the victory but in doing so, they would ruin their country.

  I told them, moreover, of my services, pretty straight up and down, for a man may be allowed to speak on such subjects when others are about to forget them, and I also told them of the manner in which I had been knocked down and dragged out and that I did not con sider it a fair fight any how they could fix it. I put the ingredients in the cup pretty strong I tell you, and I concluded my speech by telling them that I was done with politics for the present and that they might all go to hell and I would go to Texas.

  When I returned home I felt a sort of cast down at the change that had taken place in my fortunes and sor row, it is said, will make even an oyster feel poetical. I never tried my hand at that sort of writing, but on this particular occasion such was my state of feeling that I began to fancy myself inspired so I took pen in hand, and as usual, I went ahead. When I had got fairly through, my poetry looked as zigzag as a worm fence; the lines wouldn’t tally no how so I showed them to Peleg Longfellow, who has a first rate reputation with us for that sort of writing, having some years ago made a carrier’s address for the Nashville Banner, and Peleg lopped off some lines and stretched out others; but I wish I may be shot if I don’t rather think he has made it worse than it was when I placed it in his hands. It being my first and, no doubt, last piece of poetry, I will print it in this place, as it will serve to express my feelings on leaving my home, my neighbors and friends and country, for a strange land, as fully as I could in plain prose.

  Farewell to the mountains whose mazes to me

  Were more beautiful far than Eden could be;

  No fruit was forbidden, but Nature had spread

  Her bountiful board, and her children were fed.

  The hills were our garners—our herds wildly grew,

  And Nature was shepherd and husbandman too.

  I felt like a monarch, yet thought like a man,

  As I thanked the Great Giver, and worshiped his plan.

  The home I forsake where my offspring arose;

  The graves I forsake where my children repose.

  The home I redeemed from the savage and wild:

  The home I have loved as a father his child;

 
The corn that I planted, the fields that I cleared,

  The flocks that I raised, and the cabin I reared;

  The wife of my bosom—Farewell to ye all!

  In the land of the stranger I rise or I fall.

  Farewell to my country!—I fought for thee well,

  When the savage rushed forth like the demons from hell.

  In peace or in war I have stood by thy side—

  My country, for thee I have lived—would have died!

  But I am cast off—my career now is run

  And I wander abroad like the prodigal son—

  Where the wild savage roves, and the broad prairies spread,

  The fallen—despised—will again go ahead!

  Afterword

  In August of 1835, Davy learned that he’d been defeated for another term in the House of Representatives. Pretty sore he was. “I have no doubt that I was completely Raskeled out of my Election.”

  The Jackson people—and Tennessee was a Jackson stronghold—had been all strong against him and even his erstwhile friends, the Whigs, their bankers and their lobbyists, who had been happy to use or play him in their struggle with Jackson, had now come on all tepid and were cutting him loose.

  Davy was fed up. His political career was a bust. His second book was not selling well. He was in debt and tired and more and more often sick with the old malaria from his time exploring in Alabama after the Creek Indian War days. He no longer lived with his family—hadn’t for some time now. He drank too much, too often. The next year he would be fifty.

  So on November first, Davy and a few friends lit out for Texas. From Memphis, the Niles Register reports his quip: “They can go to hell and I will go to Texas.”

  There are two ways to look at this. You might say, should you be so inclined, that here was Davy running off again. After all, he’d done this before in his boyhood and as a young man. He’d run off from school, from his employer and from his family. He was no sooner married than he ran off to fight in the Indian wars and when his enlistment ended he ran off back home, even though the war continued. Back home for a bit less than a year, Davy just couldn’t keep still and again ran off from his family and re-enlisted in Jackson’s army. Shortly after returning home that time, it was his wife Polly who, in a manner of speaking, did a runner: she up and died. And all this doesn’t even count the times Davy moved his family from place to place or took himself off on long hunting and exploring trips whenever he was feeling pressure at home or in his political life or just whenever the itch come on him. You might say Davy was something of a study in mobility; that he seems to have had a thing for leaving. You might even say this propensity to turn his back and hoof-it out of whatever situation in which he found himself was a well-established trait in his character.

  Or more generously, you could say that in America in those days it was possible, even common, for a man to re-invent himself, make a new start in a new place, unburdened by old debts and other ties. All a man had to do was up and go. In the 1830s, Texas was the place to go.

  In January we hear from him next. In Texas he signs an oath of allegiance to the “Provisional Government of Texas” and is awarded a grant of land. In February he arrives in San Antonio De Bexar.

  It is unclear exactly how or why Davy wound up at the Alamo. His friend Sam Huston, commander of the Texicans, didn’t believe the Alamo should or could be held against the army of Santa Anna. But Jim Bowie and William Travis were determined to make a stand there and Davy decides to join them.

  Over the years there’s been a lot of back and forth as to the exact manner of Davy’s death at San Antonio. Some hold he died early on in the battle; others speculate that he died fighting in the last ditch, just as the Texans were finally overwhelmed. Still others assert that he was among the prisoners Santa Anna had executed following the battle.

  The only thing about which we can really be sure is that David Crockett was killed by Mexican troops when the Alamo fell in early March 1836.